The Voss family is anything but normal. They live in a repurposed church, newly baptized Dollar Voss. The once cancer-stricken mother lives in the basement, the father is married to the mother’s former nurse, the little half-brother isn’t allowed to do or eat anything fun, and the eldest siblings are irritatingly perfect. Then, there’s Merit.

Merit Voss collects trophies she hasn’t earned and secrets her family forces her to keep. While browsing the local antiques shop for her next trophy, she finds Sagan. His wit and unapologetic idealism disarm and spark renewed life into her—until she discovers that he’s completely unavailable. Merit retreats deeper into herself, watching her family from the sidelines, when she learns a secret that no trophy in the world can fix.

Fed up with the lies, Merit decides to shatter the happy family illusion that she’s never been a part of before leaving them behind for good. When her escape plan fails, Merit is forced to deal with the staggering consequences of telling the truth and losing the one boy she loves.

Poignant and powerful, WITHOUT MERIT explores the layers of lies that tie a family together and the power of love.

“Not every mistake deserves a consequence. Sometimes the only thing a mistake deserves is forgiveness.”

Colleen Hoover is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Slammed, This Girl, Point of Retreat, Hopeless, Losing Hope, Finding Cinderella, Maybe Someday, Ugly Love, Maybe Not, Confess, November 9, and It Ends with Us. She has won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Romance twice – for Confess in 2015 and It Ends with Us in 2016. Confess was adapted into a seven-episode online series. In 2015, Colleen and her family founded The Bookworm Box, a bookstore and monthly subscription service offering signed novels donated by authors. All profits are given to various charities each month to help those in need. Colleen lives in Texas with her husband and their three boys. Please visit ColleenHoover.com.

I love It Ends with Us. I love Maybe Someday. I love November 9. I love so and so and so. Basically, I love all of her novels. But Without Merit is that book that spoke to me in a different kind of level. It was released at a time, the perfect kind of time, that I truly needed it the most.

Twenty-four-year-old truck stop waitress and single mother Catherine Wright has simple goals: to give her five-year-old daughter a happy life and to never again be the talk of the town in Balsam, Pennsylvania (population three thousand outside of tourist season).

And then one foggy night, on a lonely road back from another failed date, Catherine saves a man’s life. It isn’t until after the police have arrived that Catherine realizes exactly who it is she has rescued: Brett Madden, hockey icon and media darling.

Catherine has already had her fifteen minutes of fame and the last thing she wants is to have her past dragged back into the spotlight, only this time on a national stage. So she hides her identity. It works. For a time.

But when she finds the man she saved standing on her doorstep, desperate to thank her, all that changes. There’s an immediate connection, and it’s more electric than the bond of two people who endured a traumatic event. It’s something neither of them expected. Something that Catherine isn’t sure she can handle; something she is afraid to trust.

Because how long can an extraordinary man like Brett be interested in an ordinary woman like Catherine…before the spark fades?

Amy Harmon’s claim of Until it Fades being “a modern-day Cinderella story that will make you hope again” is true.

Until it Fades starts off with a riveting scene that has the perfect mix of shock and dread that will seep through your system and enough to make you curious as to what the repercussions of our dear heroine, Catherine Wright’s actions are. It grabs a hold of you from the get go. K.A. Tucker slowly but surely created a delicious build up with having the early chapters of the book consist of a past to present transitions. Through that format, it shed some light towards the root cause of it all and created a perfect avenue to easily showcase the difference and growth that took place in Catherine’s character: Teen Catherine to Mom Catherine.

“It does feel magical. It does feel like a fairy tale. That a man like Brett – so charming, so talented, so breathtakingly handsome, so seemingly perfect in every way – would become infatuated with an ordinary woman like me.”

When your life is a hot mess at twenty, it’s cute. At twenty-seven…well, not so much.

It’s just that my lofty dreams—making it as a real estate agent, paying rent on time, showering daily—have stayed just that: dreams. Oh, and love? I’ve decided love might be a little ambitious for me at the moment. Instead, I’ve settled for the two guys who will never leave me: Ben & Jerry.

That is, until Dr. Adam Foxe takes up residence as the town’s new vet.

With his strong jaw, easy confidence, and form-fitting scrubs, it’s not long before every housewife in Hamilton is dragging neglected tomcats in for weekly checkups.

Like everyone else, I’m intrigued. Even after I spoil my chance at a good first impression, he still offers me a proposition I can’t refuse: play his girlfriend at a family function and he’ll hire me as his real estate agent. Welcome to love in the 21st century.

It’s too bad I underestimated Adam’s irresistible charm and the undeniable attraction that burns between us. The day he pins me to the wall and silences me with a kiss, the line between reality and ruse begins to blur. Every teasing touch brings me to my knees. Every kiss promises more.

Always count on R.S. Grey to give you a good romantic comedy book. Of course, with a healthy dose of drama on the side too.

The Foxe & The Hound kicks off with a messy encounter of a hot guy, clumsy and clueless girl and an untrained puppy. Strike one for a heated introduction.

But what happened next surprises the both of them.

Mr. Hot Guy, Adam Foxe, turned out to be the now assigned vet for Ms. Clumsy and Clueless, Madeleine Thatcher’s, untrained puppy – Mouse. Uh oh. That’s just the start of it. Because living in a small town you sure are bound to bump into the same people more often than you would want to, right?

FEELS LIKE SUMMER (Summer Storm #2) SIX DE LOS REYES Release date: April 12, 2017 In print: April 30, 2017

Cover Design by: Porcupine Strongwill

BLURB

Five-minute girlfriend. This is what Jett signs up for when she meets Adrian and his band Arabella at beach music festival Summer Storm. One kiss and the attraction is too electric to ignore, but Jett has no room for love and Adrian is Mr. Relationship who’s getting over his recent breakup. The solution? Keep it simple. Keep it casual. For three months (that’s the rule about breakups, right?), Jett helps Adrian move on and Adrian shows up on Jett’s bed whenever she wants.

Then the three months are up and neither of them are in a hurry to be the first to leave. Does Jett walk away from a potential disaster or does she finally let someone into her closely-guarded heart?

Six de los Reyes has been reading and making up stories for as far as she can remember. In fifth grade, she learned to write about the stories she wanted to read. As a pretend grownup, she writes contemporary romance novels. Her day job doing science has something to do with being a part-time mermaid and a part-time labrat. She currently lives next to the sea.

Other works include:
Just for the Record
Beginner’s Guide: Love and Other Chemical Reactions
Sounds Like Summer

BOOK REVIEW

The story kicks-off when Jett was approached by Franklin and Kenny, members of a band named Arabella, and asked to pretend to be their front-man’s, Adrian, girlfriend. With a backstage pass to Isaiah on the line, Jett grabs the opportunity and set-off to rescue Adrian from his ex-girlfriend who’s currently parading herself with his new man. But five minutes with Adrian and an unexpected explosive kiss shared ultimately changed everything.

“It’s a careful progression of notes building toward a climax of guitar riffs and earth-shattering crescendos.”

This book is my first ever read from de los Reyes and I doubt that it would be the last one. I was highly impressed with how she handled the plot, made the story go full circle and narrated everything in it in such a poetical manner. The story and words flowed seamlessly. By reading the synopsis you may think that you already know where the story is heading, well you’re clearly wrong on that front. With some seemingly common scenes, de los Reyes made it her own and painted things into a new light while setting clever and beautiful imagery to her reader’s mind. Yes, you may get several key points ticked off (like from casual hook-up to later on one or both characters will feel something towards the other) but the conflict presented and the turn of events in Feels like Summer will surprise you in a lot of ways.